After a worker died on their watch in 2012, a business owner and his project manager went to court after being charged criminally for their oversights.

Raul Zapata Mercado worked for the contractor U.S. Sino Investment Inc. and was working on a home in Milpitas, California in January of 2012. The project manager at the site had received a “stop work” order from a building inspector who was on site just a few days earlier. The inspector was worried about cave-ins and the site did not have a permit to dig deeper than five feet. Work should have only been resumed after the city determined the site was safe and all concerns were addressed.

The project did not stop, and a 12-foot wall of dirt collapsed on Mercado after days of heavy rains and he was killed. It was a cave-in just like the one the inspector was worried about. The owner of the company Richard Liu, and the project manager, Dan Lugo, were charged and convicted of involuntary manslaughter. They were criminally charged because the city believes that they knew that what they were doing could put people in danger. They ignored the stop work order, and will serve two years in prison because of it.

The company was fined $168,175 by Cal-OSHA in June of 2012 for violations as well. It also was discovered that Liu did not provide workers’ compensation insurance to his workers. In addition to the manslaughter charge he was convicted of several felony labor code violations for willfully violating a safety order and causing an employee’s death. Further investigation also revealed that Mercado was not wearing head protections and the site did not employ an excavation expert to make sure that the wall was installed or maintained properly.